I'm not sure his demonstration is 'fair', as in someone really quantizing that track would probably do a slightly better job. But it does highlight the effect of over-quantization. Which happens a lot , together with the 'autotune-the-hell-out-of-it' fashion.
Lots of boring music being produced. But , while it wasn't really recorded because recording was expensive, musicians 'phoning it in' have probably always been the majority of popular music.
Which is part of why people revolting against AI generated music is a bit weird to me. So AI music is too far, but so much over produced and changed in the bay is acceptable. It's interesting to me how arbitrary that line is. I abhor the over produced pablum as much as the AI generated stuff equally.
Both are excruciatingly boring.
90% of the music I listen these days is recordings by musicians that I saw live, and bought the CD at their gig. And even then about a quarter of the CD's I buy are misguidedly auto-tuned making the CD very bland compared to their live performance. I much prefer live recordings, where it's much harder to fix a mistake by one of the musicians because everything is audible on all microphones.
On the one hand it's great for (indy) music that you can have the equivalent of e 70s EMI studio in your living room. On the other hand the editing possibilities make people too perfectionist, wringing all personality out of their music.
Source is "The Real Reason Why Music Is Getting Worse" from 2024:
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bZ0OSEViyo&t=1m50s
* Found via transcript search for "fool in the rain": https://filmot.com/search/fool%20in%20the%20rain/1?channelID...
Also similar "HOW WOULD JOHN BONHAM SOUND TODAY? (Quantized)" from 2019:
But what about the non-greatest drummers? The other 99.9% (or higher) of musicians who are tiers below Bonham? Quantization is a net improvement. It takes unlistenable performances and makes them listenable.
How is that a good thing?
Humans have limited attention and time, so most of us don't like to waste them on bad things. Human artistic history is suvivorship in practice. The best things rise to the top and are kept, and the worst fall away. This is a natural mechanism that produces a shared culture of good things. When everything is good, nothing is, which is exactly the place we find ourselves now.
Not everybody gets to be an astronaut when they grow up. Our culture celebrates mediocrity because we're afraid of the implications that certain people are naturally better than others. The result is we have no more heroes or aspirations, and computers can fix lack of talent and lack of effort at improvement.
I think you're on to something, but it isn't quite what you think it is.
Corrections are largely a cost issue. But not because singers are so expensive.
The costs being saved are related to the rarity of finding someone who is a great singer at the same time that they're also a great dancer and stunningly attractive. It's much easier to find someone who's an outlier on one dimension than someone who's an outlier on two. If you want someone who is extreme on three dimensions (that you specify in advance), you probably won't be able to find that person at all.
Corrections in production mean that you can achieve something like this:
- Beauty: extreme natural talent, plus help from consultants, stylists, makeup artists, etc
- Dance: about what an average person can achieve through intensive training
- Vocals: extreme machine-supplied talent
at low cost. There are other possible approaches. You could look for a great singer who's willing to have tons of plastic surgery. You could look for a great dancer who's willing to have their singing and physical appearance 'corrected' for a trifecta. I don't actually think either of those would make for a cultural improvement - to the extent that we aren't already doing them - compared to what we have now.
To me, the central question is: is this about the composition or the performance? Personally, I spent my university time getting a degree in music composition, so getting the point of the composition across is my priority. I'll auto-tune and quantize whatever if the composition comes across better. But I could understand if other people feel differently (they are a purist or very performance-oriented).
> so getting the point of the composition across is my priority. I'll auto-tune and quantize whatever if the composition comes across better.
Which also means you might even move things out of sync/tune if the composition asked for it, right? The point mentioned here is just the trend of lazy fully gridded mixes where the entire song is the exact bpm all the way through and nothing strays off the grid.
soul | soulless
listenable ______|_________
unlistenable |
| soulless
listenable |_________
Does it bother you that the drumline consists of two bars recorded on a synthesizer and then repeated over and over again with inhuman, flawless precision for the entire duration of the song?
A lot of electronic music is also someone sitting on a loop machine and "playing" their samples.
I don't think anyone is saying music should all be recorded "raw" without any post-production. The argument is that the workflows used by most big record producers today encourages "sanding away all of the edges" of music, thru quantization, pitch correction, comping etc.
I'd argue that's only one problem (algorithmic music discovery, and how that removes gatekeeping and incentivizes bland "genre" music being a far bigger one). But the two go hand-in-hand. Lower barrier to entry (of "listenability") + lower barrier to distribution = a music landscape dominated by bland, samey bands.
Their subsequent albums got progressively more polished. Still have the street band energy, but they obviously put a lot more effort into the production.
My favorite album BY FAR is the first one. It's just FUN!
You do not need to be the greatest musician to make great music.
If we're talking street performers, Lucky Chops et co laying it down in Herald Square (NYC); "Funkytown / I Feel Good":
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-km8p6rb_EY
* LC's official video, but I don't think the audio is as good as above: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=da-wrSJaV-E
Or Gasper Nali and his one-string bass guitar:
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cmWi0vn5Y4
* Via: https://kottke.org/21/02/gasper-nali-and-his-homemade-bass-g...
I’m not saying players have to be metronome-locked like a drum machine. Pulling/pushing the click is fine.
It also gives musicians a false sense of skill if the producer just gives thumbs up and all they hear back is their own quantized drums. Instead of, you know, practicing and actually nailing the beat.
If all you do is quantize it to the grid, why even bother setting up a drumkit to record. We all know those hits are being sample replaced anyway, might as well just pull up the midi kit.
It's like a non-cook not realising the role of MSG in a dish: despite the lack of awareness, they wouldn't enjoy the dish as much without the MSG
See also: Using 100% refined flour for everything (That does have a long-term negative health effect not unlike the sugar one you mention), and make their seating uncomfortable to turn tables.
In addition to the fact everything was just objectively better when you were 5-12 years old.